Believe In Me
by Silenthunder
Summary: I can hardly believe they're gone, my siblings who believed in that imaginary Narnia. I had thought I had convinced myself that it wasn't real, but the dream tells me otherwise, and now I'm not sure I even believe myself.


I sit up in bed, gasping. Tears cover my face, covering the dried paths that tears from previous breakdowns have created. My stomach churns, my throat aches with sobbing, my hands gripping the sheets, my forehead sweaty. This fever I've had has worn me down, but...the dream has brought me to the breaking point.

Why won't it leave me alone? I can't forget the dream, can't forget the thoughts that started a few months ago. They always resurface when I think they are well buried. The memories, the haunting loneliness, the silence that screams painfully because it doesn't have enough noise to fill it. The noise of my siblings. My parents. My best friends. The noise of life and love and happiness and sadness and home.

Home. I dreamt about us at home. We were talking about our experience, our first visit to Narnia, with the Professor and his friend, whom we fondly had begun to call Aunt Polly. After we told them our story, they told us theirs, about how they were there and saw the creation of the Lion's land. Edmund had said that their visit was much better than ours, with them being at the very beginning of Narnia, but the Professor – who had told us to just call him Digory – shook his head. "Beginning, middle or end, it makes no difference," he explained. "All time is important to Him, and everything that happens is valuable. He never prizes one story of His earthly children above the others."

Stories. I remember how stories were important in Narnia, but not so much here, not important to me. "They were only stories," I would tell them and myself. "Just stories. Just pretend things that never happened. You have lively imaginations, but you'll grow out of it soon." I'll grow out of it, I kept thinking. And I have. I had. I thought I had. But the dream told me I hadn't. Why hadn't I?

Because they...were real? I had told myself it wasn't so. I try to tell myself that now. But my brain doesn't accept it like it has all the other times. It keeps repeating the dream. I saw the train crash. I watched it go round the curve too fast, saw the desperate attempt to stop it without success. Saw it lurch forward, saw one side lift into the air, sending it crashing down on its side. It crushed Digory and Polly and Peter and Edmund as they stood there, not able to get out of the way in time. The screech of useless brakes drowned out the screams of quickly-dying people. The others were inside the train, I knew. They had not survived. The telegram had stated it so bluntly. It uses _stop_ for periods. Stop, stop, stop. Stop remembering, stop crying, stop being weak. Because crying is weak, my friends and the books and the whole world tell me. Depending on someone else is weak. You have to be independent, strive alone, make your own path, enjoy your own time before death because it won't matter afterwards, and finally find your own way to eternity.

But is hasn't worked for me. It never has worked and it never will. You need to depend on someone, but that hasn't worked. Everyone I've tried depending on has failed. So what is there to depend on?

Him.

And then I remember: the train crash wasn't the only part of the dream. I remember seeing a warm golden light envelop the train and smaller lights wafting up to join it, and in the middle of the light was His Face. But which one? It had seemed to shift between Aslan's and the Face of Someone Else. Suddenly I understand: the other was the Face of Jesus. I'd forgotten Him too, but He hadn't. He had welcomed them home.

But I just wish they were _here!_ I want them back, want time back, want to keep believing. But I've stopped believing, lost my faith, lost my focus. Where have the days and months gone? Why did I not stay on the straight, narrow road that is described in that Book I don't even look at, let alone read, anymore?

Painful confusion still whirls in my mind as I lie back down, closing my wet eyelids, trying to steady my breathing. _Why, why, why...?_ The innocently presented word hisses evil into my ears, and then finally slips away, but I know it hasn't. It will always come back to ask again.

Then the uneasiness from _why_ suddenly ceases as I hear a voice.

"Susan."

Only One Being could say my name like that. And yet it's too good to be true, too much to believe...

"Open your eyes, Susan. See me."

I obey, and to my astonishment, find myself on a sun-bathed mountain, so warm and pleasant and refreshing. But then I see Him, the Lion standing before me, reflecting the sun in His eyes. He comes forward, always looking straight at me, until He's so close I could reach out and touch Him if I want to. But do I want to?

"Touch me," He commands, tenderly but firmly. I slowly reach out, and once my fingers have felt the warm mane and fur, I grasp hold of them and take pleasure in the loving warmth, breathe in the mysterious, sweet perfume-like smell that clings to them. He doesn't mind, and stands still to let me bury my face in the softness. How did I not miss that? How could I have gone all that time and not missed Him?

He steps back and gazes at me with a compassionate authority. "Believe!" And then he opens His mouth and, just like that time on my second and seemingly last adventure, He breathes on me. That breath is just as refreshing and pleasant as the mountain was. I inhale as He exhales, taking more of it in, feeling it surge through my bloodstream and into my heart and through my whole body, finally taking over my mind. I smile, a true smile for the first time in days, and sigh.

"Are you brave again?" He asks that same question, again with all seriousness.

And this time, I think, I can give Him a better answer. "Very." But, in truth, it's just the same as the last answer. A little.

He asks, but I can tell He already knows. "Are you sure?"

"No!" I reply, feeling like I might cry again, feel the sobs appear and force their way up my throat, push out of my mouth. "I'm not brave! I'm just a little child, weak and helpless. Lucy was better at being faithful than me. She wasn't like me."

"You are My Child, but you are mature," He explains. "For the mature Children always know they need to depend on me. You have grown with this rediscovered knowledge. Try not to forget it."

"I can't forget _them!_ Why did You take them away? Why couldn't it have been me? They were better than me, they didn't deserve to die. You don't even care about them, taking them away and leaving me here to suffer! Where were You? Why didn't You change it?"

It is then that I see Him crying, too. Not because of my anger towards Him, but because He shares my love for them. His tears are as big as diamonds, and precious as gold, maybe even more. "No, they did not deserve it as you see it," He whispers. "I did not take them because they were your superiors, but because they deserved to go Home at last. And you will too, someday."

"Why couldn't it have been me?"

"Did Lucy not tell you what I told her the last time? No one is ever told what would have happened. And the reason why that is is because, it would be much more painful if you knew what the alternate road had been, what it led to. Oh, you probably would have died with just a glimpse of what the other path showed. That is why I set you to walk this path, and I did not change it because you would have been hurt more than you already were. I was there when the crash happened, and I was there to welcome them. I have been with you, waiting for you to come to me. You don't earn your way here. Just depend on Me. Let me take your troubles, for I know how it feels. I have walked through all the sorrows before you. _I know_."

"Oh, Aslan!" I wrap my arms around His neck as far as they'll go. He purrs, then continues, "Stop pretending, Susan. Remember what I promised: Once a King or Queen in Narnia–"

"–Always a King or Queen," I finish now smiling.

"And so you always will be one, even when you arrive Home. I am real, my dear one; Narnia is real. You just have to trust that it is so. Will you trust Me, Queen Susan the Gentle?"

"Yes, Aslan."

"You will have trouble again in your world. But take heart, for I have overcome both your world and Narnia. I will never leave you, as I promised with this." He lowers his Head and I see the clear, un-scabbed mark of where the White Witch's knife went in to kill Him that horrible night.

He looks back up, comes forward and puts His Head on my shoulder for me to hug Him. "I love you, dear heart."

The name given to Lucy is given to me, and yet, I don't feel boastful of it. Something tells me that I also was His dear heart, too. Isn't everyone?

"I love you, Aslan."

Now I am brave. Now I believe.


End file.
